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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • Just built a new PC literally this weekend. WiFi mouse and Bluetooth drivers did not work out of the box. I had to spend hours searching through what little info exists out there tangentially related to my problem to find:

    WiFi drivers were fixed in kernel 6.10, which fortunately Mint let’s you upgrade to 6.11 at this time with relative ease.

    Bluetooth drivers do not appear to have been fixed, but I might have a shot if I switch over to a rolling release distro and relearn everything I’m used to from using Debian-based distros for years. Dongle is on order, but I don’t love having to have 2 bluetooth devices.

    It’s unclear if mouse drivers have been fixed in the kernel, but I was able to find a nice set of drivers/controller on github which fixed some mouse problems but only if i used their experimental branch and it did not work with my wireless adapter. Very fortunately I had an old wireless adapter from a mouse from the same brand that was able to close the loop, but that was just dumb luck.

    By EOD today I should have everything I want working, but it wasn’t “30s” of searching - to your point, 60-70% of problems may be solvable that way, but having 1/3 of your problems require technical expertise is not going to bring Linux out of the hobbyist domain.

    Note: this is not a complaint against Linux, just a statement of fact. These things have gotten a lot better over the years, and things get easier to find as the community grows and these struggles get discussed more openly, but there’s still lots of challenges out there that take more than a 30s search.












  • Got it, so just vibes… Well, since you caught me on a Friday with a light schedule…

    Amperage rating is maximum load, not how much it uses the entire cycle. I just so happen to have my washer hooked up to a power meter, and look at that! It doesn’t draw the entire load during the entire cycle (which would look like a flat line)!

    Runtime is not correlated with energy use. Energy is actually much more closely linked to water usage, since it takes a lot of energy to heat up all that water for a cycle, and all that water weight causes extra load on the internal motors. The additional runtime of modern washing equipment is mostly idle time to allow for additional soaking, etc. and not contributing much energy use. Historical trends show a pretty steady decline in energy use. Here’s one study that found a 75+% decrease in energy use per load from the 90’s to the early 2010’s:

    This is interesting, because when partnered with data on tub size, it actually shows that even as loads get larger, energy use has been decreasing over time:

    (source is Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers again).

    Back to your original comments about refrigerators, I’ll just add, going from ~1400 kWh/yr in 1980 to ~400 kWh/yr in 2014 is a 72% decrease in energy use (which is amazing), even while real appliance costs have come down AND volume has gone up.

    IDK where you live, but 1000 kWh/yr for me would cost ~$250 ($0.25/kWh). Swapping a 1980s fridge with a modern one would pay for itself in just 2-3 years. Hell, I could even splurge for a fancy fridge and still have a payback faster than investing in the stock market.

    These gains, largely driven by regulatory efficiency targets, all benefit the consumer and the electricity grid at large. Being cranky about the fact that “they don’t make them like they used to” doesn’t change the fact that meaningful improvements have been made over time.